The defence minister insists the AUKUS program is on track to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines in the next decade \u2014 despite the delays plaguing shipbuilding programs in both the US and the UK.<\/p>\n
Richard Marles has met with his American and British counterparts for the fourth annual AUKUS ministers meeting in Washington DC.<\/p>\n
He said the talks focused on executing the ambitious plan, now that both the US<\/a> and the UK<\/a> had finished reviews of it.<\/p>\n “Now that they are all done, the focus has to be on delivery,” Mr Marles told journalists in Washington after the meeting.<\/p>\n “The milestones are being met, AUKUS is on track, but this is a massive, massive task and it’s really important that we all have our shoulders to the wheel.”<\/p>\n The first “pillar” of the AUKUS pact \u2014 between Australia, the US and the UK \u2014 involves arming Australia with American-built nuclear-powered submarines from the early 2030s.<\/p>\n The ‘pillars’ of AUKUS<\/p>\n But the agreement says the US will only provide them if doing so will not degrade its own capabilities. That will require the US building the submarines almost twice as quickly as it is now, according to US projections.<\/p>\n Australia is providing $US3 billion ($4.5 billion) to the US to help boost its shipbuilding capacity.<\/p>\n Mr Marles, who visited the US’s largest military shipyard in Virginia this week, said he was confident the American submarine program was catching up and the AUKUS timelines remained achievable.<\/p>\n “It was a very impressive facility to see, and also gave me a sense of confidence that, as we invest into the submarine industrial base here in the United States \u2026 we are actually seeing an increase in the production rates here.”<\/p>\n The British shipbuilding program is also experiencing delays in both construction and maintenance, prompting a former British Navy chief to declare: “The UK is no longer capable of managing a nuclear submarine program.”<\/p>\n Rear Admiral Philip Mathias, the former director of nuclear policy at the British Ministry of Defence, said AUKUS should be “cancelled now”, the UK’s Telegraph newspaper reported<\/a> on the weekend.<\/p>\n But the UK’s Secretary of State for Defence, John Healey, said Britain was “all in” on AUKUS now the US review was done.<\/p>\n “All three of us are now determined to reboot AUKUS with a new commitment and a new determination in particular to deliver,” he told reporters in Washington before the talks.<\/p>\n\n